Kiosks or shells are frequently used as a temporary office or store frequently in connection with the sales or displays of products or the dissemination of various information. A common location for such kiosks is in shopping malls. Ideally, a kiosk should be easy to assemble and disassemble. In addition, advantage should be taken of various facilities at a shopping mall such as lighting. For example, shopping mall's lighting is most likely high efficiency (sodium or mercury vapor lamps) giving objects in the mall a yellowish or greenish-blue hue. The hard walls and large spaces of the mall give the sound field a high frequency `edge` and a long time-period reverberance. The human psyche interprets these cues as reasons to keep moving (looks cold/unnatural) and to be alert to the surroundings (open area, open to attack by predator). This detracts from the human's ability to concentrate on a detailed presentation.
Sales kiosks in malls and fast food restaurants use these cues to encourage the customer to buy and keep moving. In their cases, short customer stays mean higher profits.
However, many commodities, such as places to live, need time for assessment and contemplation. While having a sales person present at a kiosk may make the potential customer feel more secure with the surroundings, they may also feel pressure from the sales person, and move on before having assessed and contemplated the information the advertiser wants to put before them.
Goods and services may be looked at in many different ways. Houses may be looked at for price, appearance, location, style, size, number of bedrooms, size of living room, trees in back yard, etc. Architects, builders, landscapers, and home improvement contractors may be looked at for capability, style preferred, materials used, and the appearance of finished projects. Tailors, dress makers, and clothing designers are looked at for their style, quality, cost, and location. Exotic car dealers, gourmet food stores, fine restaurants, and travel agents all have attributes of which advertisers would like the public to be aware. The problem has been: How to inform the public.
Conventional advertising has drawbacks: In print (visual), too many or too big ads will bury the customer in unwanted data, too few or too brief ads will deprive the customer of information needed, and wide area distribution of ads is expensive and wasteful of paper and ink. Radio (audio) cannot show goods. Television (audio/visual) is expensive for the exposure given. The on-line computer (visual/interactive) is slow to show pictures and text, and distributes information far beyond the area the advertiser can serve. Further, none of these means of advertising allows the user to talk with the advertiser as part of the service.
Part of the answer is a multi-media device, able to store vast quantities of pictures and data, but only showing the customer pictures and information that meet the customer's needs. As the customer is in control, the customer can request and be given a detailed presentation. The problems with this are two: 1) The device ought to be in a quiet, secluded place so that the customer can concentrate on and consider the information presented; and 2) The customers need to have a way to talk with the sponsor of the presentation if they have questions or wish to buy.